


Whispers Between Worlds

by giantsequoia



Series: a Spirit of Barbs [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Claustrophobia, M/M, Porn With Plot, handjobs, typically giantsequoia-verbose with lots of cock and growling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 06:13:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14129814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giantsequoia/pseuds/giantsequoia
Summary: Michael Hawke is a bloodthirsty warrior with poor interpersonal skills. Anders hates the Deep Roads, but agrees to accompany his expedition because he thinks Hawke is hot.While fighting darkspawn, they get trapped under a cave-in together. Hawke 'distracts' Anders from his claustrophobia by coming on to him, and on him.





	Whispers Between Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, this was based on a kinkmeme prompt. It became a prelude of sorts to my novel-length fanfic featuring the same versions of Hawke and Anders.  
> 

Anders hated the Deep Roads for many, many reasons, and yet all of them had melted in the fire of Michael Hawke’s glare.

The warrior had offered Anders a generous share of the salvage in return for his guidance and expertise on this insane expedition, which was nice and of course appreciated. Even then, Anders would hardly have considered breaking the oath he’d once sworn to never return to the Deep Roads if not for the look on Hawke’s face.

His piercing green eyes had held a feral glint, one that Hawke usually reserved only for the unfortunate creature he was charging at with his greatsword raised, howling his bloodlust. Seeing that mad, barely contained fury turned in his direction was utterly terrifying, and at the same time... strangely, deeply arousing. Before Anders could really even try to understand the bizarre mix of emotions churning in his gut, he’d agreed to follow Hawke into the dark, infested earth for the purposes of healing, advising, and occasional offensive magic.

Of course, Anders had cursed fluently and at length after the warrior had departed with Varric and Bethany in tow. The idea of going back on his word to Michael Hawke, however, carried a connotation of danger at least as bad as (if not worse than) crawling into the blighted, cramped, spider-filled, darkness-choked Deep Roads.

So it came to pass that the mage and the spirit he hosted found themselves trailing a motley caravan of dwarves, human hirelings, and sturdy wagons pulled by harnessed brontos.

Justice seethed at the distraction: _How is this helping the plight of Kirkwall’s mages? You are wasting time, risking yourself needlessly for this man’s greed_.

Partly annoyed with Justice, but mostly annoyed with himself for agreeing entirely with the spirit and going along with Hawke’s wishes anyway, Anders forced the presence inside him down to a bright, hard coal. It continued to burn in the pit of his stomach, which hardly helped his disposition, but there was nothing else for it.

The expedition, led by Bartrand but funded largely by Varric and Hawke, ran into trouble almost immediately. Their chosen entrance had also been chosen as a nesting site for a horde of giant spiders, which themselves only became a problem after the narrow opening had been forcibly widened with magical pyrotechnics in order to admit the bulky wagons.

At least, Anders thought dryly, the spiders were just big spiders, and not the corrupted kind that spewed blighted venom and burst with foul magic alongside their hissing and screeching attempts to cocoon and eat anyone who approached. Small favours.

After the spiders, however, Anders’s ability to find humour in their situation rapidly withered. For at least their first few days in the Deep Roads, he was distracted by the resurgence of an anxious fear that he’d been all too happy to forget.

The stench was certainly horrid enough. When it wasn’t darkspawn spume and the creeping rot they spread, it was staleness and mould, nug shit and out-of-control fungal life. The pervasive reek of corruption was often so intense that it could be _tasted_ , leaving one’s skin crawling and one’s tongue feeling like a slab of rotted meat.

And there was a less obvious scent that Anders suspected only he and Bethany could detect – a smell that came from the Roads themselves, the very Stone itself. It was a magical aftertaste that lingered in the air, concentrated most at intersections and in thaigs. Ruin, neglect, decline – it was the smell of all these things. It was the smell of abandonment, of hopelessness, of lost and doomed spirits in the walls. It was the smell of an immense and glorious empire that had crumbled into shadows and dust, but not without leaving behind traces that still cried out to be remembered.

Then, of course, there were the darkspawn themselves. Anders had grown so used to the remoteness of their whispers in his mind that reentering their domain felt, at least initially, shockingly and vilely unpleasant. The dreams that haunted all Grey Wardens, having subsided somewhat over the past year of his life in Kirkwall, returned with a vengeance, making his sleep fitful and restless.

Adjusting to the cacophony took some time, but he’d managed it once before and he would do it again. He was being paid well to be down here and there were people counting on his expertise, after all. At least this time there were no awakened Disciples nearby, whispering intimate cruelties into the ether to taunt and distract him.

Worst of all, however, was not the stench, nor even the creatures that produced it, but the darkness they came from. No matter how hard Anders tried to forget, the enclosed spaces lit only by magic and weak, oppressed torches brought back deeply uncomfortable memories of his time in solitary confinement at the Circle Tower in Ferelden.

Anders couldn’t shake a persistent uneasy feeling that the weight of all that rock and earth over his head was pressing down on him. It made it hard to concentrate, hard to _breathe_. He kept his staff radiantly lit as long as his mana could sustain it, but inevitably he would have to rest and the shadows would encroach again. He found himself thinking of the sun with wistful yearning.

By the third day, Anders had resigned himself to the fact that he would never be entirely comfortable in these particular dank tunnels. At least when he’d explored Kal’Hirol with the Warden-Commander, there had been vast open spaces and a modicum of ventilation and bright blue illumination from the ancient lyrium wells. Here, the creeping darkness, the cloying stench, the nearness of the stone walls that closed around them like a tomb – they all skirted constantly around the edges of his awareness, provoking uncontrollable surges of dim, half-remembered terror.

Anders wasn’t aware that his face was paler than usual, but he definitely felt overly sweaty and hot despite the damp chill of the Roads that the lava channels did pitifully little to ward off. Bethany was busy dealing with her own anxiety, and Fenris couldn’t be bothered caring about a mage’s discomfort; Varric might have noticed had he not been occupied dealing with his brother. That left Hawke who, of course, saw it right away.

Hawke was far from the friendliest guy that Anders knew. In fact, he was one of the nastiest, and he seemed to buy into the Chantry’s dogma about mages being dangerous and needing to be locked away for the greater good far too easily for someone of his intelligence. Justice disapproved of him strongly for that reason, but Hawke could hardly be called their enemy. He had slaughtered templars without hesitation or mercy on more than one occasion – not only to defend his sister, but on Anders’s behalf as well. Hawke hadn’t reported him or betrayed the location of his clinic, either. That was at least something that helped suppress the spirit’s burn within him.

Though Anders had trouble understanding _why_ Hawke protected him, he couldn’t help being grateful. He was intensely relieved that Hawke seemed to view him, if not as a friend, then at least as an ally. The idea that Hawke might see him instead as an enemy was almost more unpleasant than the threat of templars capturing him and dragging him to the Gallows. Hawke couldn’t make him Tranquil, but he was at his heart a creature of savagery and violence. Anders had no doubt that a death at Hawke’s hands would be horrific and agonizingly painful – he’d seen it happen often enough to others. He would choose such a fate over Tranquility in an instant, but he still took pains to stay on Hawke’s good side. He had no desire to feel that man’s anger turned in his direction for any reason, ever.

In that regard, it was unfortunate that Hawke seemed to be angry _all the time_. If he was snarky and rude and sometimes bitingly cruel to those around him, then at least he wasn’t attacking them in the fits of blood rage that he turned on anyone and anything that crossed him.

Even so, Anders often got the feeling that Hawke was watching him when he wasn’t looking, in the same predatory manner that he watched his potential enemies. Hawke was far cannier than he appeared at first glance, and Anders had never once actually caught him staring, but sometimes when his back was turned he could _feel_ those green eyes, running up and down his body. Sizing him up? Evaluating him? But for what?

It was the strangest feeling when Anders realized that he hardly even minded at all. He was certainly afraid of Hawke in some ways, but intensely curious about him in others. A deep part of himself that he thought had died a long time ago felt drawn to the wild warrior.

Hawke was a gorgeous creature, tall and handsome and broad, all hard muscle and sinew and intensity. His thick reddish-brown hair and beard, his piercing gaze, and the perpetual scowl he directed at essentially everybody other than Bethany made him rather intimidating and difficult to make eye contact with. The precious few times Anders had seen him smile were moments that shadowed his dreams. The expression changed Hawke’s entire demeanor. It was like he was a different person when he smiled, but he kept that part of himself carefully contained because it might expose some vulnerability.

In his weakest moments, Anders found himself wondering what it would be like to feel Hawke looming over him – to be pinned beneath his weight, feeling his hot breath on his neck as Hawke took him. Justice railed against these errant, distracting thoughts, but Anders relished them because they made him feel so... _human_. He hadn’t felt as alive as he did while thinking about Hawke in a long, long time.

Despite this, and some rather subtle insinuations that Hawke had made in the past that Anders still wasn’t at all sure he understood, the possibility of the bloodthirsty warrior having any romantic interest in him at all seemed so remote that Anders hadn’t bothered to get his hopes up. In all probability, Hawke watched him for the same reason Fenris watched him: because he was a mage, host to a volatile spirit to boot, and therefore dangerous.

With all this in mind, it came as something of a surprise when, near the end of their third day in the Deep Roads – or at least after the bout of hard traveling that followed their second uneasy sleep – Hawke sought him out and sat down next to him.

Anders had his eyes closed at the time, crouched against a chunk of dwarven masonry mercifully clean of darkspawn spume some distance from the caravan. He was trying to picture himself on a sunny beach in Antiva; trying to calm his racing heart, trying as hard as he could to ward off the disturbing sensation that the walls of the cavern were closing in around him, deliberately trying to bury him alive, to suffocate him and leave him here trapped and immobile in the dark-

“Anders,” said Hawke’s voice nearby, and Anders was almost relieved that the interruption had distracted him from where his thoughts had been heading. He opened his eyes to see Hawke sitting right next to him, unsettlingly close, staring at him with an expression that – if not warm or welcoming – was at least not overtly hostile. He hadn’t even heard the clank of plate armour as Hawke had approached and sat down.

“What’s the matter with you?” Hawke asked bluntly.

“What?” Anders asked, unsure he meant. Hawke’s tone was tinged with a dangerous undercurrent, but it always was. The man could have made asking someone to pass the salt at the dinner table sound like a death threat.

“You look sick,” Hawke said. There was a sharp glint in his eye Anders couldn’t identify – suspicion? Or was it... concern?

“I’m fine,” Anders said in as level a voice as he could muster. The last thing he wanted was for Hawke to find out about his claustrophobia. He would deal with it on his own – there was no point in distracting anybody else with his childish fear.

A sneer seemed to want to cross Hawke’s face, but he almost visibly suppressed it.

“It’s bloody cold down here and you’re sweating,” he said skeptically. “Your face is _grey_.”

Anders rubbed his forehead uncomfortably. The darkspawn voices murmuring at the edge of his consciousness were growing louder, but at least the conversation had distracted him from his anxiety. He momentarily considered telling Hawke about it.

Instead he said lightly, “Well, I am a _Grey_ Warden,” trying to deflect Hawke’s unnervingly direct scrutiny with humour.

Hawke clearly wasn’t fooled. His eyes narrowed and Anders caught a strong whiff of sweat and blood as Hawke leaned closer to him, speaking in a low voice.

“Listen to me carefully, mage. I’m depending on you to warn us of incoming darkspawn and keep our grievous bodily harm to a minimum. That’s why you’re here.”

Hawke paused, frowning in an unfocused, inward kind of way that suggested he wasn’t entirely happy with the way he was phrasing things. “You’re being paid well for it.” He kept frowning, not liking that either.

Irritably, he tried again. “You’re... I mean, I... you’re _valuable_ to me. I don’t want you... to....”

He mirrored Anders’s action, rubbing his forehead and scowling. “Maker damn it! You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Anders’s heart was racing as he considered what Hawke was trying saying without actually saying it. He cared about him? Was that it?

“Careful, Hawke,” Anders said in a dry, even tone that successfully hid the strange excitement he felt. “Someone might misunderstand you and think you’re capable of affection.”

Hawke made a snarky, nasty face at him and looked away. Anders wondered if maybe his comment hadn’t been a bit mean. Of course, it was positively adoring compared to some of the things he’d heard Hawke himself say to other people.

Anders held up a hand placatingly. “Really, Hawke,” he said. “I appreciate your concern, but it’s... it’s nothing.”

Hawke gave him an annoyed, withering look. He was silent for a moment, and then he shrugged with a clank of heavy plate and stood up.

“You’re the healer,” he said indifferently, and he walked away.

Anders watched him go, feeling a peculiar regret. Except for their awkward conversation after Justice had emerged in the Chantry, this was the only time they’d spoken about things not related to the expedition, or one of Hawke’s other ventures undertaken to scare up the coin to fund it. It was the first time Hawke had ever expressed anything like concern for him – and Anders had rebuffed it.

Had it been a mistake? Should he have taken this chance? Would it ever come again?

 _What is it about this man?_ Anders wondered. _Why am I drawn to him?_

∞

The next “day” in the Deep Roads, the expedition was well underway and Anders was in reasonable control of his lurking propensity to panic. Typically, he’d just started to think that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad when sudden, unexpected calamity struck.

It started with an upwelling of darkspawn from a chasm that split an intersecting Road some distance ahead. Anders barely had time to register the sudden buzzing activity in his mind that indicated imminent aggression and yell a warning before the hissing and howling of genlocks and hurlocks reached their ears.

Bartrand, leading the way with Varric at his side, stopped dead; a few of the hirelings, unaware of the danger, kept going for a moment before Bartrand barked at them and they paused uncertainly. Others – the smarter ones – started to draw their weapons.

Hawke had his sword drawn and aloft already, holding the massive blade steadily before him with his shoulders hunched and faced twisted into a snarl. His entire body was alive with tense energy, just waiting to be unleashed. He glanced at Anders out of the corner of his eye, and Anders saw that the his eyes were wild, barely human with bloodlust. Anders felt an unexpected thrill of mingled fear and excitement at the prospect of seeing Hawke fight.

“Darkspawn!” he called again, urged on by the volume of the buzzing in his mind, louder this time to make sure everyone understood. The hirelings who had wandered on ahead scurried back to the dubious safety of the group, hands clenched on swords and crossbows and their faces drawn in fear. _What did you expect in the Deep Roads, you fools?_ Anders thought scathingly.

Bethany approached Varric and Bartrand from behind, her staff in hand, one fist aflame with magic as she prepared one of her favoured fireballs. Fenris crouched beside her in a defensive posture with his blade ready. The lyrium brands in his skin flickered softly, stirred by the elf’s agitation.

The chasm from which the darkspawn were emerging was invisible, as it seemed to be around a corner that was lost in gloom ahead of them. The darkspawn themselves were visible only as vague, distant shapes in the pitiful light of the lava channels. Mere moments later, however, the first of the creatures entered the illuminated radius of Anders’s staff, some distance down the tunnel.

The band was mostly genlocks, but there were also four or five of the larger and deadlier hurlocks. None were emissaries that Anders could see, for which he was grateful.

“Protect the wagons!” Bartrand roared as some of the hirelings made noises of fear. Hawke sneered his contempt and tightened his grip on his sword. His eyes swept the approaching line of darkspawn, deciding which would be first. The hirelings backed into a tight cluster around the wagons. The brontos shuffled and grunted in annoyance.

“Varric!” Bartrand yelled. “Get your bloody friends organized and protect us!”

Varric, in the midst of calmly deploying Bianca, smiled soothingly at his brother. “Oh, don’t you worry, Bartrand. Hawke eats darkspawn for breakfast.”

Anders suddenly turned around in horror as more creeping whispers in his mind alerted him to a second rather pressing problem.

“They’re coming from behind us as well!” he shouted, and Hawke turned to him with a look of surprise. Curses and groans of terror ensued among the hirelings, soon drowned out by an unholy chorus of screeching and wailing that assaulted them from the darkness behind.

“Shrieks!” Anders warned. “Watch your backs and avoid their claws – they’re poisoned!”

Hawke laughed gleefully at the prospect of such a challenge, and several of the hirelings stared at him in open incredulity. Varric sidled over to Hawke and nudged him gently. Hawke looked down at the dwarf with a questioning scowl.

“What do you think?” Varric asked. “You and Blondie go forward, Fenris and Sunshine and I go backward?”

Hawke turned to Anders. Realizing the intention of his gaze, Anders focused to the best of his frazzled nerves’ ability and tried to differentiate the murmurs that plagued the periphery of his awareness. At that point, several of the hirelings with crossbows opened fire on a few genlocks who were nearing the caravan; the few who were snuffed out helped Anders determine which of the voices echoing through the taint came from where.

“I think we’ll need your help more than Bethany and Fenris will, Varric,” he said after a moment. “There aren’t that many shrieks, but the brood ahead of us is... fairly big.”

“Keep the hirelings with the caravan,” Hawke said to Varric. “We’ll handle this.”

Varric looked at Anders, who nodded. “That’s probably best.”

Varric shrugged. “If you two say so,” he said. He drew several bolts from his quiver and loaded them with the ease of long expertise into Bianca as he turned to converse with Bartrand.

Anders looked at Fenris and Bethany, both of whom were watching and listening. Behind them, the rest of caravan had trundled to a halt, surrounded by hirelings with their weapons drawn.

“Be careful,” Anders warned. “They’re very fast and they like to hide in the shadows before they strike. They prefer to surround a single target at a time and overwhelm them from multiple directions, so _watch your back_. Not all of them poison their claws, but enough of them do that you’ll want to avoid them as much as possible – if you contract the taint....”

Bethany’s face pinched, and Anders let his voice trail off. From what Hawke had told him about their flight from Lothering, Bethany knew all too well what the taint did to a healthy body.

“I suggest frost magic instead of fire, at least at first,” Anders said to her. “Slow them down, keep them in a known position, and let Fenris have at them with his blade. But never let your guard down.”

Bethany nodded her thanks. “Good luck,” she said. Her eyes caught Hawke’s, and for a moment the warrior’s face softened.

“Protect yourself,” he growled to her. “I _mean_ it.”

Bethany smiled. “I will, brother. You do the same.”

Hawke nodded, and his sister turned and hurried toward the rear of the caravan. Fenris followed her without a word.

Hawke turned back to the approaching darkspawn with eager bloodlust evident on his face. “Where are they coming from?” he asked Anders without looking at him.

Anders gestured. “A hundred paces or so up the Road and to the right. There’s an intersection ahead – we must be nearly to it. Down that branch another hundred paces is a chasm where the surrounding rock is unstable. I think it must connect to a natural cavern. That’s where they came from.”

Varric returned from his conversation with Bartrand, holding Bianca ready and looking questioningly at Anders and Hawke before glancing coolly at the darkspawn.

“Think we could push them all the way back to their hole, without letting a single ‘spawn through to get at the hirelings?” Hawke asked. His tongue flicked out to moisten his lips, his eyes never leaving the encroaching creatures.

Anders considered. He thought of making a joke about Hawke’s apparent concern for the hirelings’ well-being, but while Varric would probably find it funny, Hawke would likely just sneer at him.

“Yes, probably,” he answered. “Since there are three of us. If you have in mind what I imagine you must, and if Varric and I hang back for support, then we could do it. But it’s really not a good idea, Hawke. It’s a bit much to risk for your own entertainment. More could emerge – we could get separated from the caravan – the Road could collapse on our heads....”

“I agree with Blondie, Hawke,” Varric added. “Maybe we should just let them come to us.”

Hawke bared his teeth in a savage grin. “No. They’re taking too long to get here. Watch my back.” And with a crazed roar, he charged.

“Hawke!” Anders yelled in frustration, but it was too late. There was no reasoning with Michael Hawke when he got into one of his blood frenzies. Anders cursed the man’s obvious insanity, but he couldn’t help admiring his boldness at the same time.

Varric shook his head and sighed. “Let’s go, Blondie. Best not get left behind.” He took off after Hawke at a somewhat more sedate run, and Anders followed.

They caught up with Hawke as he was about to meet the line of darkspawn. The genlocks hissed at him, raising their axes and crude swords; Hawke carved two of them in half with his first swing. Black, viscous blood spurted from the pieces of their twitching corpses, and Hawke had charged through it before it hit the ground. He let out a deranged cackle as he whirled his greatsword about him in a deadly storm of flashing steel.

The genlocks surrounded him, but their strikes seemed pitiful bouncing off his heavy plate armour in comparison to the awful havoc he wreaked on their bodies in turn. Anders tossed them back with repulsion glyphs whenever too many came inside the effective radius of Hawke’s greatsword.

The more intelligent hurlocks hung back, eyeing Hawke carefully as they edged around his battle with the genlocks, assessing the danger and vocalizing in gurgling grunts. Varric had shot two through the head with Bianca before the larger darkspawn realized there was an additional threat. They turned with challenging howls towards the approaching mage and dwarf – just in time to receive a bolt of lightning that connected them all in a fatal, dazzling circuit.

Hawke barely glanced at the charred, smoking cadavers as he dispatched the last of the genlocks efficiently, if messily. He charged on to meet the next group, barely breathing hard. Anders and Varric ran to keep up.

∞

Darkspawn in and of themselves in sub-Blight numbers did not constitute calamity, especially not in the Deep Roads where they were a constant, ambient threat. Hawke’s inhuman capacity to ignore pain, wickedly sharp and absurdly large sword, and limitless depths of rage to vent proved quite effective when coupled with Varric’s skill with his beloved crossbow and Anders’s magical talent. Though it took them a while, the trio enjoyed remarkable success in meeting Hawke’s goal of pushing the creatures back to the chasm they had crawled out of.

Anders was satisfied with a job (mostly) well done. They had protected the caravan and eliminated some nasty creatures that would have needed to die anyway. On top of that, he took a secret, vindictive pleasure in watching Hawke fight.

He was somewhat less satisfied with the fact that by the time they reached the intersection, they had travelled a considerable distance from the caravan. They had no idea what was going on back there, and they would be cut off from help should the darkspawn arrive in force.

Anders’s Warden sense of the surrounding darkspawn numbers would have indicated such a threat, and so he could at least rest easy on that point. He did not, however, like relying on his staff for light. The caravan had all the fire. He was tiring from throwing out so many spells, and the monsters hadn’t all been killed yet.

Fortunately, they were nearly done. Hawke had advanced through scores of genlocks and hurlocks, slicing and slashing like a madman. Few of the creatures remained in one piece after he killed them; those that did were left to gape gorily, innards spilling from them, keening in pain as they died. It was fundamentally impossible for Anders to feel sorry for darkspawn, even when Michael Hawke was their cause of death, but he came close a few times.

At last they had travelled down the branch Road and reached the edge of the chasm. The stone surface around it was cracked and crumbling; the crevice extended halfway across the otherwise smooth Road and all the way up the wall on one side. It delved downward as well, deeper into the rock than the light of Anders’s staff could penetrate. It was a considerable distance across, too – much farther than anyone could jump.

Hawke stood on the edge of the crevice for a while, laughing like a child as he shoved darkspawn trying to clamber onto the Road back into their hole with his foot. Occasionally, he would allow one to live long enough to get to its feet on the lip of the chasm and lunge at him with a snarl before impaling it and tossing its corpse over the edge.

Varric stood beside him, occasionally nailing a climbing genlock to the far side of the chasm with a well-placed bolt. Anders stood on Hawke’s other side and rested, his staff providing light.

“I could stand here all day and kick these nasty things back into their pit,” Hawke commented after several minutes of this. “But... I suppose we should probably go back and see how the caravan is doing. How many more are there, Anders?”

“Not many,” Anders said absently. “I imagine seeing their foul brethren falling down on them from above, the lucky ones already dead, has convinced most of the rest to give it up for now.”

Hawke snickered and snap-kicked a hurlock in the face as it appeared over the lip, gurgling at them in impotent rage. The force of Hawke’s armoured boot cleanly broke the creature’s neck, and it tumbled into the darkness without another sound.

Then Anders started into full alert, raising his staff. More whispers were suddenly assaulting his mind – many more. And they were at the same elevation, not echoing up from the corrupted depths.

“More up here,” he said tensely, and instantly Hawke was on edge, sword raised and eyes staring in the gloom. Varric loaded an explosive bolt into Bianca and raised her to aim, finger twitching on her trigger.

“Look out!” Anders yelled as a fireball roared out of the darkness. He threw up a magical barrier above the chasm, and though it dissipated much of the missile’s power, it didn’t stop it completely. Anders and Varric each dove to one side as Hawke turned around in a defensive hunch, growling in pain as the weakened fireball washed over his armour.

“Emissary,” Anders said unnecessarily as he regained his feet. He lifted a hand towards Hawke with a flare of healing magic, soothing the minor burns on his arms and back induced by the heated metal of his armour.

“Let’s get back from the chasm,” Varric suggested. “Let them fall into it if they that stupid. I’d rather not take my chances.”

Hawke nodded his assent and they retreated some distance from the chasm, waiting for the darkspawn to appear. Moments later, they did, but only at the very edge of Anders’s illumination.

The hurlock emissary leading them raised its staff and shouted in a garbled, guttural voice, “DIE! YOU DIE! YOU DIE!”

“No, you!” Varric yelled back, firing his explosive bolt at the emissary. It raised its hands, a twisted staff of blighted wood in one fist, and the bolt flew upwards off its trajectory to explode uselessly against the ceiling of the Road. The brief burst of flame illuminated a considerable brood of hurlocks, most of them aiming crudely constructed crossbows.

“Fuck,” Hawke muttered.

Varric opened fire and Anders reached deep into himself, drawing reluctantly on the extensive reservoirs of Justice’s magic. He would rather not encourage the spirit to emerge, but he had little choice right now. He didn’t have enough energy of his own left to keep them all alive.

Hawke roared a challenge as the hurlocks’ bolts whistled at them out of the darkness. Some of them bounced off Hawke’s armour, leaving a mark or a dent; he swung his sword in front of him with uncanny reflexes, knocking several more right out of the air. Varric dodged one or two bolts aimed at him with surprising agility for a dwarf.

Anders’s skin crackled briefly with azure fire as he unleashed the forces he’d gathered. Lightning and fire crawled around the Road in a spiraling blaze of power that converged on the hurlocks with an earsplitting clap of thunder.

Dust and gravel rattled from the ceiling as several of the hurlocks exploded outright, their bodies ripped apart by the savage energies Anders had unleashed. Others were severely singed by the raging storm and stumbled away into the darkness, howling their agony, crossbows abandoned and forgotten.

The emissary only barely protected itself in time with a powerful magical barrier; the spell of its own it had been gathering petered out in a pathetic wash of light.

Hawke let out a whoop of laughter at the gory results of Anders’s spell. “ _Come over here and taste my blade, you filth_!” he bellowed.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a furious roar shook the Deep Roads around them, painfully echoed in Anders’s awareness. A pair of immense horns appeared in the chasm and, almost before Hawke, Anders, or Varric could react, the massive shape of an ogre had shoved itself out of the hole and to its feet.

“Nicely done, Hawke,” Anders muttered. “You just _had_ to taunt them.”

If Hawke heard his words at all, he ignored them. He was fingering the hilt of his sword and staring with a deranged grin at the ogre as it snarled and brandished its massive fists threateningly. Varric edged away from Hawke, glancing between the ogre and the darkspawn still on the far side of the chasm.

Hawke laughed eagerly. “Come on!” he yelled at the massive beast; it obliged him with a deafening roar and charged.

Hawke danced out of its path and twisted, stabbed the ogre viciously in the side as it flew past him. It roared again, this time in pain and anger, and kicked out behind it to send Hawke staggering backwards. The ogre whirled and pounded the floor of the Road with both of its massive fists, missing Hawke by inches as the warrior barely dodged its blow. A tremor ran through the floor and more dust sifted down from the walls and ceiling.

Hawke slashed at the ogre’s face with a cry of rage; the creature howled in pain, one huge hand clutching over its bleeding maw. Blindly, it lashed out, backhanding Hawke in the chest hard enough to send him flying. Hawke only just managed to maintain a grip on the hilt of his sword with one hand.

Anders, hanging back and sniping bolts of frost and fire at the hurlocks whenever he could, was once again amazed at Hawke’s sheer durability. After grinding to a halt on the stone flat on his back, he sprang back to his feet at once. His breastplate was dented and one side of his face was bruised and scraped bloody, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He snarled right back at the ogre and ran towards it with his blade raised to strike. The ogre bowed its head and charged, this time clearly intending to squash the warrior against the wall.

It was around that time that the true calamity struck. Anders had no idea how it happened. It might have been the ogre’s tantrum, or a spell of his or the emissary’s, taking its toll on the surrounding rock – already weakened by the presence of the chasm and the magical forces exchanged. It might even have been Hawke himself, his considerable mass only increased by his heavy plate, being flung against the stone by the ogre’s charge. Or it might have been something else entirely.

Whatever the cause, before Anders had really realized what was going on, the earth beneath his feet was shaking, boulders were crashing down around him and the air was becoming choked with dust. His worst fear was coming true: the Deep Road was collapsing right on top of their heads.

“Maker’s breath!” Anders yelled in terror, ducking and protecting his head with his arm. For a brief, awful moment, he was paralyzed with fear. He’d had more nightmares of being buried alive than he could remember, in solitary and occasionally afterwards. He’d fought off more than one fear demon in the Fade that had sensed his nightly thrashings and come to feed on them. In that moment, he felt as though the weight of the rock was already pressing down on his chest.

Then Hawke’s face appeared in his mind, and Anders remembered what he’d said. _I’m depending on you_.

“Hawke!” he called. “Varric!”

With the dust in the air and the sudden disorientation of the earth heaving beneath his feet, Anders had lost track of both his companions. He called again, but all he could hear was the thunder of cracking stone and the shrieking of darkspawn in pain.

Where _was_ Hawke? The charging ogre had thrown him from his feet again, but Anders had seen that man grab a mature dragon by the head and twist it until its neck snapped. _Surely he wouldn’t have... surely he couldn’t be_...

Unwilling to contemplate the possibility, Anders rushed blindly through the falling stones in the direction he remembered seeing Hawke last. Unexpectedly, a hissing genlock appeared in front of him; Anders ran headlong into it and barely avoided the swing its axe. Had the creature followed the ogre out of the chasm?

It didn’t matter. Remembering the innate resistance to magic that genlock shared with their dwarven progenitors, Anders spun his staff around to slam the blade affixed to its end through the genlock’s face. It collapsed and Anders kept running, yelling after Hawke and Varric. If either one responded, he couldn’t hear it over the roar of crumbling rock and darkspawn screaming as they were crushed.

The floor of the Road pitched and Anders was pelted with bits of gravel and pebbles. Somehow – whether by the grace of Andraste or the magic of Justice – he avoided being killed by falling boulders as he ran.

He heard the ogre bellowing in pain, although whether it was because rocks were landing on it or because Hawke had finally gotten to it, Anders couldn’t tell. He angled in that direction, hoping for the latter. He nearly tripped over a thrashing hurlock with its legs and one arm smashed beneath a boulder; he left it to its fate and moved on.

The ogre’s agonized howling was abruptly cut off, and a dark shape hurtled past him. When Anders spun to see what it was, he caught a glimpse of a piece of the ogre’s head, dripping gore and with one splintered, bloody horn still attached to it. Hawke, then. Anders stumbled between the rapidly growing piles of pulverized rock, yelling the warrior’s name.

A gauntleted fist caught his arm and he swung around wildly, coming face-to-face with Michael Hawke. Anders was so relieved to see him alive that he was initially struck dumb as Hawke tugged him down to a crouching position. His armour was splattered with blood, both his own and the ogre’s. There was a long, ragged gash down the bruised side of his face. His eyes were wide and his pupils dilated with bloodlust.

“Protect us!” he yelled to Anders over the crashing and booming of collapsing masonry and howling darkspawn. A little ways behind him, the ogre lay in pieces in a sticky pool of tar-black blood.

“Where’s Varric?” Anders shouted back, casting about for the dwarf, but all he could see was dust and rocks.

“ _Shield us now, mage_!” Hawke screamed in his face, shaking him by his shoulders.

Anders erected a powerful barrier just in time to deflect a descending chunk of dwarven masonry that would have undoubtedly killed them both had he not acted. The chunk fractured into pieces that tumbled down the dome of his protective bubble.

More rocks plunging from the darkness above hammered the barrier, forcing Anders to channel all his effort into maintaining it. In his agitation, the light of his staff dimmed.

Beside them, one of the great rectangular pillars that supported the ceiling of the Deep Road began to tilt with an ominous grinding noise.

The continuous crash of the collapsing cavern was nearly deafening, but the thunderous boom made by the pillar as it impacted the Road was louder still. Anders felt the noise as physical force in his chest and teeth. He whispered a prayer of thanks that it hadn’t fallen on his shield, but their options for escape were rapidly dwindling.

The collapse of the pillar was far from the end of the devastation. Without its support, another section of the Road’s ceiling further ahead began to fall in as well.

The crunching, grating roar quieted somewhat as a chain reaction of collapsing pillars carried the ongoing destruction away from them. For some time, dust and small rocks continued to fall all around them, piling up around the bubble of energy beneath which Hawke and Anders hunkered.

Eventually the rain of debris slowed somewhat and the sinister rumbling ebbed. Anders began to think that the shifting, grinding rock around them might have stabilized. Almost as soon as the notion occurred to him, a tremendous boulder slammed unexpectedly into his barrier from above, knocking the wind out of him with the sudden, intensely increased strain on his mana.

For the briefest of moments, Anders’s magic failed completely. The boulder descended, and he was certain they were dead.

Above him, Hawke lashed out with his fists like angry lightning, shoving his armoured weight against the massive rock as it fell. The extra split second was just enough for Anders to regain his concentration and restore the barrier, and not a moment too soon; the chunk was safely deflected, but several more pieces followed, apparently dislodged from high above them. More rubble crashed down over them and settled precipitously against the barrier, smaller fragments breaking off to slide partway down the dome.

“Son of a _bitch_!” Hawke growled furiously.

Anders, panting and exhausted, his nerves stretched nearly to their breaking point, looked up from his position almost flat against the floor of the cavern. What he saw made his face, already pale, turn positively ashen.

The cave-in had essentially buried them completely. They were surrounded by debris on all sides, and the most recent boulders to fall were less than a metre above their heads. Only the quivering magical force held them in place. Dust and gravel continued to sift down from above, filling in the gaps and gradually obscuring the faint, warm light of the Deep Roads’ lava channels.

The rumbling had by now mostly ceased. More evident around them was the continuous soft rustle of settling rubble. A few surviving darkspawn mewled pitifully somewhere nearby, their voices muffled by the tons of rock they were trapped under.

Anders tried to call Varric’s name, but his throat was choked with dust and he could only cough and hack profusely. Crouched beside him and looking deeply pissed off with his head bent to avoid pressing it against the barrier, Hawke called out instead.

“VARRIC!” he bellowed, and Anders winced. It sounded as though Hawke were yelling in a tiny, solidly enclosed chamber. Surely Varric, if he still lived, could not hear them.

Yet against all odds, they heard the dwarf answer a few moments later. Anders’s face lit up with intense relief, his discomfort temporarily forgotten.

“I’m here!” came Varric’s faint voice. “I’m... well, mostly not hurt.... Where are you, Hawke? Blondie! Where are you!”

“We’re both here!” Hawke yelled. “Not seriously injured thanks to Anders, but we’re trapped!”

Anders covered his ears, unwilling in his frayed state of mind to put up with listening to the man’s voice booming voice bounce around inside their tiny bubble of free space.

Varric didn’t answer for a moment – or, more likely, he wasn’t cursing loudly enough for them to hear. As the trickle of dust and pebbles that continued to seep down through the layered rubble settled against the barrier, the light from the lava channels was increasingly blocked out. Soon, the only illumination would come from the soft blue glow of the magical force that protected them from being crushed to death. Anders’s staff was dark, all his energy focused on keeping the barrier in place.

“Do you know approximately where you are?” Varric called. They could barely make out his voice, so heavily was it muffled by the metre-thick mounds of rock and rubble around them.

Hawke rolled his eyes. He looked at Anders. “Do you know?” he asked.

Anders shook his head, still grunting to clear the dust from his lungs and rubbing his eyes to try to ease the itch of dust.

“I was against the northern wall of the Road when the collapse began,” Hawke called to Varric. “I think we’re still somewhere near there. But I don’t know how long Anders can maintain this shield.”

“Maker’s breath, Hawke!” Varric’s voice was barely audible, but his fear was obvious. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go get Bethany!” Hawke yelled back. “Bring her here and tell her approximately where we are. She’s our only chance of getting out alive!”

Varric’s answer was mostly inaudible, but Anders picked up the word “soon.” He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating on maintaining the barrier. Help was coming. He could survive this. It would just be... a little while.

In this tiny, rocky tomb, deep underground and far from the air and sun, with Michael Hawke.

Hawke sighed and, there being no other convenient comfortable position to take, lay down on his back. He stared up at the barrier, grinding his teeth and scowling. He removed his spiky gauntlets and vambraces to carefully examine the wounds on his face; his breathing gradually slowed to normal, and his pupils returned to their normal size.

Anders mostly kept his eyes closed, thinking. Assuming he ran into no darkspawn and the shrieks attacking the caravan had been dealt with, it would take Varric at least half an hour to run back to the rest of the expedition and return to the cave-in with Bethany. It would take still more time to clear the debris from atop them. There was no choice; he would have to keep the shield in place until then. If he allowed it to collapse, both he and Hawke would be crushed.

Anders took deep, careful breaths. He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to open them and see the solidity of the encroaching blackness barely a metre above his head. It was becoming difficult to breathe, and against his will he flashed back to his time in solitary.

_A dark, windowless room. Choking on stale air. Walls closing in around him. Bands of steel wrapped around his chest, tightening their inexorable grip...._

Despite his efforts to remain clam, his breathing was becoming harsh and ragged. For a moment, his control very nearly slipped, and with an iron effort of will he refocused himself on keeping the magic flowing no matter what. Letting go even for a split second would mean their deaths. They would be buried alive. Trapped here until they suffocated....

A terrifying thought struck him. How long would the air in this bubble last? The shield was gas-permeable, but how much air could there be on the other side? They were buried under tons of rock.

He was starting to hyperventilate, and he couldn’t restrain a tiny moan of fear.

“Anders,” said Hawke, and Anders jerked. He’d almost forgotten the warrior was there. “What is your problem?”

Anders shook his head in mute horror, trying to keep his breathing calm and even – the faster he breathed, the more oxygen he would consume. It was impossible. He felt panic creeping up on him, clawing at his mind, urging him to release the barrier and get it over with. Crush him and be done with it. If he collapsed the barrier on purpose, it would at least be over quickly.

But that would crush Hawke too. Anders could _not_ let that happen. Hawke had brought him down here to... to....

 _To die_ , his mind whispered cruelly. _To get me killed. To get us_ both _killed_.

“No,” Anders moaned.

“Anders!” Hawke barked, and Anders jumped in surprise at the warrior’s harsh tone right next to his ear. “Get a grip! Look at me. Open your eyes.”

There was no disobeying Hawke when he had that ring of command in his voice. Reluctantly, Anders opened his eyes and turned his head. He focused intently on Hawke, unwilling and unable to look at the barrier and the solid, impenetrable darkness beyond.

They were enclosed in a hemisphere of space with a hard stone floor. They might have been the only beings in the world. This tiny island of air and light might have _been_ the whole world, for all that could be seen beyond it.

“What – is – the – matter – with – you?” Hawke asked slowly, enunciating each word with deliberate care.

Anders cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was still hoarse and scratchy. “I don’t like dark, enclosed spaces.”

Hawke rolled his eyes angrily and sank back onto his elbows, growling with intense irritation.

“Of course. Of _course_ you are. Fucking Maker _damn_ it, Anders! Why the _fuck_ didn’t you say anything?! You don’t think it might have been prudent to mention that you were claustrophobic _before_ you agreed to go crawling through the bloody Deep Roads with me for weeks at a time? _Ugh_!”

Anders had no answer for him. He kept staring at Hawke. Their faces were inches apart; the glow of the magical barrier was faint, but Anders could practically count the individual hairs of Hawke’s beard.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, he realized that it was a little easier to ignore their surroundings with the warrior’s rugged, handsome face filling much of his field of view. Even the bruises, scrapes, blood, and furious expression could hardly detract from his appeal. They made him seem... truer. More alive. His face like this accurately reflected his personality.

“Why are you staring at me?” Hawke demanded.

Anders blinked and looked away. He made the mistake of looking instead into the blackness beyond the barrier. Doing so immediately made him feel like the wall of rock was about to slam down and crush his chest.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and his hand clenched around his staff lying at his side tightened until his knuckles were white.

“Sorry,” Anders mumbled. “It made it... I don’t know... easier to deal with.”

“I didn’t say you had to stop,” Hawke said dryly, and Anders almost cracked a smile at his tone. He immediately opened his eyes and turned back to Hawke.

Their eyes met. Hawke watched him silently, and Anders marveled at the richness of the green in his eyes. He longed to be able to examine Hawke’s face this closely in proper light; the azure tint to the barrier threw off the colour.

Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. Even his pulse began to slow down a little.

After a few minutes, Anders no longer felt like being crushed to death or buried alive or both were imminent and probable dangers. Now, ironically, his heart was beating fast as much from his proximity to Michael Hawke as it was from the situation they were in.

The tiny space they shared was filled with Hawke’s scent – mostly sweat and blood, but also a faint, arousing tinge of musk. Anders found himself wanting rather badly to reach out and run his fingers through Hawke’s beard, to brush away the dust and neaten the bits that were unkempt.

“Why do dark spaces freak you out so much?” Hawke asked.

Was that curious interest in his tone? Or was it... boredom, and disdain?

Why was it so hard to tell?

“I, uh...” Anders coughed, dislodging a few more traces of the dust that scratched his throat. “At the Circle in Ferelden, after my seventh escape attempt, they put me in solitary confinement. For a year.”

Hawke frowned. “A _year_? Solitary confinement. They do that?”

Anders snorted at his disbelieving tone. “They do that and much worse, and Kinloch Hold when I was there was positively _liberal_ compared to the way the Gallows is now.”

Hawke was silent.

“Didn’t know that, huh?” Anders said irritably. “You thought it was all books and study in the Circles? Mages kept there for their own good and everyone else’s too?”

Against his will, he felt Justice surging within him, crackling to the surface.

“You think I’ve just been complaining bitterly about it since you met me because I didn’t like the food?” he went on sarcastically. “Or maybe because the décor in the tower offended my tastes?”

“Enough!” Hawke said loudly. “Get control of yourself, mage. This is not the time nor the place for this discussion.”

Anders glared at him for a few moments, and the glow lurking beneath his skin slowly subsided. Hawke’s eyes never left his.

“It’s awful,” Anders said softly after a moment, “to be locked in a tiny room with no light, with barely enough air, with no contact with anyone but a single, hateful templar who gives you a paltry ration once a day and lets you out to bathe only once a month. Imagine, Hawke, being forced to live like that – just for a week. A week! I was in that cold little room for a _year_.”

Hawke’s scowl had stilled, and his face was blank. It was almost like he was halfway toward smiling. Anders felt a twinge of annoyance, even as he hoped Hawke would somehow make it the rest of the way towards a smile.

“It changes you,” he went on, still in a quiet voice, but there was no other sound around them to obscure it. His words were clear; they were alone in the darkness between worlds.

“Being alone for that long... being in the dark for that long. I started to dream of the sun. I dreamed of being released, even by people whose guts I absolutely hated – and in my fantasies, I hugged them anyway, because they were _people_.”

Anders had dreamed of other things, too – his home, a remote village in the Anderfels; the open air, the mountains, the sky; the smells of a barely-remembered life before the Circle.

He didn’t say any of this to Hawke. Instead he said “When they finally let me out, it was like... being reborn. It’s a miracle I wasn’t insane. Actually I was, sort of, for a while afterwards. Eventually I recovered, but I was never fully the same after that year. Every time I went into a closet to get something, or a narrow corridor, or just a dark room, I was back in that cell. Even now... even now.”

Hawke was still watching him with that empty expression. His brows were furrowed thoughtfully, but he wasn’t quite frowning. His jaw slowly shifted as he ground his teeth together.

“They put me in there to punish me for trying to escape,” Anders concluded bitterly. “All they did was cement my determination to get away, and prove to me once and for all that their laws are not the Maker’s will. Not that I needed more proof.”

Hawke raised an eyebrow but didn’t specifically address Anders’s last comment. “You’re fine now,” he observed. “You weren’t at first, but now you are.”

“Because I’m concentrating on you,” Anders said. “At least the barrier gives off some light, and I’m not alone. Otherwise... I’d be dead already. I’d never have survived this by myself.”

Hawke edged a little closer to him, his armour scraping against the stone of the Deep Road. Anders could feel the other man’s breath on his skin, and he suppressed a shiver of desire as his eyes fell on Hawke’s lips.

They were so close together. All he would have to would be to lean forward just a tiny bit and he could kiss those lips if he wanted to. It startled Anders just how _badly_ he wanted to. He barely resisted giving in to the urge, and he blinked several times, embarrassed at himself. Thankfully, Hawke didn’t appear to notice anything.

“Keep concentrating on me, then,” he said. “Nothing else, Anders. Just me. If you have a panic attack, and you lose control of your magic, we’re dead.”

“Thank you, Hawke,” Anders said sarcastically. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

They stared at each other for a time.

After a while Anders felt a large, warm hand close over his own, locked around his staff to maintain the trickle of mana feeding the barrier. A little pulse of heat rippled through him.

Hawke’s gaze never wavered from his as his hand drifted up over Anders’s arm and chest to stroke his chin with uncharacteristic gentleness. He shifted himself closer still, until their foreheads were nearly touching, and for a heart-stopping moment Anders was sure Hawke was going to kiss him.

He didn’t. Instead, he inhaled deeply while his fingers traced down Anders’s jaw. His eyes fell half-closed, as if in pleasure. His exhalation washed over Anders’s face.

Hawke shifted his right arm beneath him and propped himself up on his elbow. Anders looked up at him, unsure what was going on. Hawke braced himself with his left arm on Anders’s other side and leaned down to take a long sniff along the hollow of his right shoulder.

Anders could see nothing except the marked, battered metal of Hawke’s breastplate and pauldron right in front of his eyes. He was frozen, half with terror and half with intense arousal, at a loss as to how he should react. He said nothing as Hawke nosed up his neck to his ear, breathing in as he did so. He felt the bristly touch of Hawke’s beard against his cheek, and he could hear him continuing to sniff.

“Hawke,” Anders finally said.

“Eh?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m distracting you, moron,” Hawke said, as if this should have been obvious. “Keeping you calm.”

Anders almost laughed as Hawke’s left hand reached up to tug down on the neck of the thin shirt he wore beneath his robe. He could already feel blood rushing to his groin.

Hawke had never been this close to him. He’d never touched him like this before. Did he really think this was going to keep him _calm_?

“Is this... the best way to go about that?” Anders asked, sounding somewhat foolish even to himself with Hawke hovering over him, brushing his nose against the hollow of his throat.

Then Hawke’s head inched up and his lips pressed against the mage’s neck, electric with sensation and heat, and Anders gasped.

“Do you want me to stop?” Hawke murmured, his lips soft and warm against Anders’s skin.

“ _No_ ,” Anders ground out. “Please. Don’t stop.”

He felt Hawke smile against his neck, and for a peculiar moment Anders both wanted him to continue and wanted him to stop, so that he could see his face and his expression.

He could have shouted with elation. Hawke was clearly interested in him. There was no way this was _only_ about distracting him from their situation – incidentally, which it had effectively done

 Of course, as soon as he thought that his heart sped up again, and he squeezed his eyes shut to avoid looking up into the blackness.

Hawke brought him back again by licking brazenly along the Anders’s jaw. His tongue teased Anders’s earlobe, and then curved around the back of his ear. The fleeting, erogenous delight made him shiver. He wanted more, and Hawke gave him more. The warrior caught his earlobe between his teeth and inhaled deeply. He let out a low growl and grazed his teeth down Anders’s neck.

“ _Fuck_ , you smell good,” Hawke hissed.

What? “Uh... thanks,” Anders said uncertainly. He supposed that explained the sniffing. What was he, a Mabari?

No, Anders realized. He was Hawke. He was just being as blunt and honest as he always was. Hadn’t Anders himself, mere minutes ago, ruminated on how good Hawke smelled? Wishing he could reach out and touch his beard?

“You smell good too,” Anders whispered, honestly.

Hawke’s face loomed over him, smirking suggestively, and Anders felt joy and desire intertwine in his gut. He reached out with the hand not locked around his staff to run his fingers luxuriously through Hawke’s beard, as he’d desired. Hawke let him do it, watching him with an arched eyebrow and a sly, wicked gleam in his eyes.

After a few moments he leaned down. Anders’s eyes drifted closed as their lips connected.

He felt a pulse of heat wash over him, and he moaned into the kiss, burying his hand in Hawke’s thick hair. _Hawke is kissing me. Oh, Maker, Michael Hawke is kissing me_. Hawke’s tongue pushed into his mouth and he parted his lips to receive it.

For a while Anders simply floated in a haze of erotic bliss as they kissed. He pushed back against Hawke’s tongue with his own, but never hard enough to repel him completely.

When Hawke finally pulled away Anders felt a keen, biting disappointment. He’d never been excited by the smell of blood, but coming from Hawke now it was a strangely intense aphrodisiac.

 _What is this?_ Anders wondered. _Pure animal attraction, or more?_

There was no way to know how Hawke felt. He was as inscrutable as he was crazy – in other words, very.

Hawke sat up, as much as he was able to with the barrier holding back impenetrable death a metre above their heads. Anders kept his eyes and thoughts trained firmly on Hawke.

He watched as the warrior began to undo the straps and buckles that secured his pauldrons in place. The rerebraces protecting his upper arms came off with them. Hawke removed both joined sets from his shoulders and placed them on the floor of the Road next to his gauntlets and sword; he went to work on separating the halves of his cuirass.

Anders’s mouth was dry. Surely Hawke couldn’t be thinking of...? Here? _Now_? Kissing him to “distract” him from his phobia was one thing, but....

Hawke slipped out of the heavy plate armour and underpadding with surprising dexterity, given the lack of space he had to work with. He set the metal shells down near his feet, detaching the articulated faulds and culet in the process.

It took a supreme effort of willpower on Anders’s part not to stare at the prominent bulge in the shorts Hawke wore beneath his armour.

“Hawke,” Anders said, and Hawke looked at him. “Are you... uh... do you want to....”

He couldn’t think of a way to say it without sounding awkward and prudish. Of course, fumbling around for words without actually saying what he meant was just as awkward and just as prudish. _Maker damn it._

Perhaps fortunately, Hawke knew immediately what he meant. He snorted and leaned back on his hands, staring at Anders with one eyebrow arched.

“I was thinking more like I’d rather not crush your ribcage when I lean over you to kiss you. Really, is this the time or the place for sex, Anders?”

“You started it,” Anders said defensively, even as hearing Hawke’s deep, rough voice speak the word _sex_ made his groin ache with lust.

Involuntarily, his eyes traced down the firm curves and planes of Hawke’s muscular arms, lingering on the tuft of underarm hair that was just barely visible. The impression of his physique was alluringly outlined by his sweat-damp undershirt. When Anders’s roving gaze eventually returned to Hawke’s face, the warrior bore a knowing, satisfied smirk. Anders flushed.

“And I intend to finish it,” Hawke said, thrilling him, “but not here, not now. That doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun while we wait for Varric and Bethany, though.” The corners of his mouth twitched a little more. “All in the interest of keeping you calm and focused on maintaining the magic, of course.”

“Right.” Anders licked his lips as he watched Hawke’s hand drift almost lazily down his front to fondle himself through his shorts. “In principle, while I don’t object in the slightest, I _would_ like to repeat my earlier concern over whether this... _particular_ kind of fun is the best way to keep my mind on the magic. You,” Anders eyed what Hawke was doing with his hand, “rather demand my undivided attention, Hawke.”

Hawke snickered. “So you _do_ want me to stop.” He didn’t stop.

Anders rubbed his forehead. “I... damn it, no! I just...” He let out a frustrated groan. “Andraste’s ass, Hawke, you’re going to get us both killed.”

Hawke stopped teasingly caressing himself and reached out to wrap his hand around Anders’s wrist. Anders looked down at Hawke’s hand, unsure what he intended.

Hawke had thick, powerful fingers, and the veins on the back of his hand stood out even in the faint light of the barrier. Anders’s gaze traveled over the ridges of vein and sinew up Hawke’s forearm, the bulge of his bicep, the rounded muscles of his shoulder, and finally back to his face.

Hawke was watching him, and struck by a sudden impulse, Anders leaned over with his free hand outstretched, an aura of magic flaring around his fingers to heal the abrasions and cuts on Hawke’s face.

To his surprise, Hawke released his wrist and pushed his hand away in a flash of startlingly fast movement.

“What?” Anders asked, bemused. “I was going to heal you.”

“Don’t waste your mana,” Hawke said.

“I have enough mana,” Anders argued. “I’ve been calm for several minutes now, enough time to recover a little. I can heal you _and_ maintain the barrier for long enough for help to arrive, provided I don’t start panicking.”

“Anders,” Hawke said, his voice low and dangerous, “leave it.”

Anders shrugged and shook his head in confusion but didn’t press. They stared at each other for a moment more.

“So how serious were you about me needing your undivided attention?” Hawke asked. He moved his eyebrows up and down and the bulge in his shorts jumped a few times in unison as Hawke flexed his dick against the fabric.

Anders couldn’t help laughing. “Well...”

How dearly he would love to let Hawke do to him whatever it crossed his depraved mind to, Anders thought. After all, when would they next get the chance to be alone like this? Not until they returned to Kirkwall, certainly, weeks from now. Of course, now that he knew Hawke reciprocated his interest at least on a physical level, he intended to master his fear of the man and get to know him better. But as for right now....

Hawke leaned toward him when he said nothing more. “For example,” he said huskily, “could you keep the shield in place if I were to pounce on you right now and pin you to the ground while I kiss your neck?”

Anders swallowed, momentarily unable to speak through the hot spike of lust that Hawke’s words had provoked. “I, uh... yes, probably.”

As if his words were a trigger, Hawke sprang. He moved so fast Anders hardly saw what had happened – the next thing he knew, he was on his back and Hawke was on top of him. His left hand was locked around his staff by Hawke’s grip on top of his, and his right hand was pinned above his head.

Hawke’s nearness, the palpable heat of his body, stirred Anders’s blood to pumping. His scent was suddenly overpowering: unmistakably blood, but also sweat with the slight rankness to it of an adult human male who hadn’t bathed in some time, and a deeply arousing, musky tinge of raw sex appeal.

Hawke’s lips found his neck, and Anders shuddered at the sudden warmth, the smooth, wet tongue sliding over his skin, the gentle sucking sensation. He squirmed beneath Hawke’s weight, wanting to touch the man at least with the hand not glued to his staff, but he could barely manage a vain wriggling motion. Hawke was so much stronger and heavier than he was that it was useless to try. Hawke, however, made a pleased growl against the hollow of his shoulder, apparently excited by his futile resistance, so Anders kept trying anyway. He could feel the bulge of Hawke’s erection grinding against his hip, and his own cock was hardening rapidly.

“You know,” Anders breathed as Hawke’s lips trailed across the pulse in his throat to work on the other side, “when Bethany and Varric get us out from under all this rock, they’re going to wonder what you’re doing in just your smalls and leg armour. For about three seconds. Then they’ll leap to conclusions.”

“You’d be surprised at how fast I can put all this crap on,” Hawke muttered. “If they want to whisper and stare, I say let them. They have no say in what you and I choose to do when we’re alone.”

His tongue swept up Anders’s jaw and probed the mage’s ear in a way that made him gasp and twitch.

“Besides, Varric won’t care,” he went on, lips brushing against Anders’s ear. “He’s a loving kind of dwarf, he’ll understand. He’ll probably turn it into a steamy novella. And Bethany – I bet you she knows already.”

“What?” Anders asked, confused despite the intimate sensations that were demanding rather a lot of his mental processing capacity. “She knows what we’re doing right now, some distance away and through a Deep Roads cave-in?”

Hawke laughed at him and raised himself up to look into Anders’s eyes. “She’s not stupid, Anders,” he said. “She’s seen you watching me, and she’s seen me watching you. She’s asked me a few times when we’re going to ‘get on with it.’ And here we are, getting on with it. Why not? We’re trapped under rocks with nothing _else_ to do, until my dear sister arrives and gets to be the one who saves the day for once....” He smirked.

Anders didn’t know quite what to think of that. Was he so obvious that Bethany had deduced his feelings before he himself understood them? Who else...?

_Hang on a sec._

“You... watch me?” he asked.

Hawke leaned down to trail kisses along his jaw to his left ear. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, too,” he whispered, grazing the mage’s earlobe with his teeth and nipping it playfully.

Anders groaned. Of course, of course he had noticed... he’d just never thought... _Maker, I’m a nitwit._

“Hawke... let go,” he said plaintively, tugging on his pinned wrist to indicate where he meant. “I want to touch you.”

“Mmm-hmm?” Hawke’s lips whispered across Anders’s cheek and he briefly caught the mage’s lower lip between his teeth. “What if I would rather keep you under control, huh? Keep your hands where I can see them?” he murmured slyly, right against Anders’s mouth.

Anders tried to argue, but Hawke silenced him with a kiss, thrusting his tongue into his mouth. Anders pushed back with his own, which only seemed to inflame Hawke more. He groaned and pushed down against the mage, devouring his mouth with fiery passion. Anders could only be glad that Hawke had decided to take his armour off – his fears of being crushed would have come true otherwise, but in a far different fashion.

He could feel Hawke rutting against his thigh as they kissed. Anders himself was painfully hard beneath his robes, and he struggled to try and angle himself to relieve some of his ache, but again Hawke was too clever and strong for him. He was pinned, utterly at Hawke’s mercy, and though it was frustrating, Anders realized he hardly cared. While Hawke’s aggression was frightening, it was also stirring a deep, primal need inside of him that he’d never even realized was unfilled until this moment.

“Please,” Anders almost whimpered when Hawke finally released his mouth. “Please, Hawke. Let me touch you.” He let out a gasping moan as Hawke’s mouth grazed along the skin of his jaw, the scrape of his teeth almost painful. “Hawke... _please_.”

Hawke smiled wickedly down at him and kissed him briefly but intensely. “Oh, alright,” he said. “Only because it’s so hot hearing you beg for it.” He released Anders’s hand that he had pinned above their heads with his own. “You’re going to be doing a lot of that, if I get my way. And I will.”

Anders was swimming in a haze of lust, barely aware of what Hawke was saying. All but the smallest hint of his awareness of their situation had fled his conscious mind. The rutting, growling man on top of him was his whole world.

Anders smoothed his hand down Hawke’s back, tracing his spine through his undershirt. When he reached Hawke’s waist, he slipped his hand up inside the thin cotton shirt to run back up and over the bunched, sweaty muscles of his back. Hawke was kissing him again, and their tongues intertwined as Anders caressed him, drifting back down towards Hawke’s muscular butt.

He slipped his hand into Hawke’s shorts and made a whining, eager noise of desire. He clenched his hand over Hawke’s left buttock, feeling its heat, relishing the tension of powerful muscle. Hawke growled against his lips, apparently pleased, and Anders gave his butt a squeeze. His fingers slipped down to run through the soft hair that covered Hawke’s massive thigh, and then, unable to wait a moment longer, flitted around to find a grip on his cock.

Ander’s eyes popped open as he felt its girth. Hawke was _big_.

Hawke exhaled sharply against his lips as Anders freed his erection from the tight fabric that confined it. “Yeah,” he grunted, resting his forehead against Anders’s as the mage’s fingers danced up his length. “Now stroke it. Start nice and slow. Good boy.” He gritted his teeth with a relieved groan when Anders obeyed him, and their lips connected again.

Hawke started to thrust gently into Anders’s fist, rolling his hips in an easy rhythm that matched the beat of Anders’s stroke, making appreciative noises deep in his throat. Anders’s mind was scrambled by his eagerness and lust, and the strangeness of joy mingled with fear of the bloodthirsty man on top of him. His fear gave every sensation a vivid edge to it, somehow dramatically intensifying the heady pleasure of Hawke kissing him and the intimate sensation of skin sliding over hard, veiny flesh beneath his fingers. Hawke’s implacable grip still kept his left hand locked around his staff, but he could only barely think coherently enough to maintain the slow drain of mana that kept the barrier above them in place.

Hawke’s mouth lifted from his, and the groaned. He leaned down to sniff at Anders’s neck and licked it hungrily.

“Fuck, you smell so good,” he mumbled. “You smell like _fear_ , Anders. You’re afraid of me. Aren’t you?”

Anders was, and he couldn’t answer for that very reason. Hawke raised his head to stare into his eyes. His pupils were dilated slightly, the way they were when he was immersed in blood rage and savagely killing everything around him.

“Aren’t you?” Hawke asked again, more forcefully this time, shoving his weight against Anders with his hand on the mage’s chest.

“Yes,” Anders mumbled, wondering if his admission would change anything. It did – it seemed to drive Hawke crazy.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Fuck, that’s hot.” His tongue explored Anders’s face wherever he could reach. He pumped himself into Anders’s fist with sudden vigour. “Faster,” he said hoarsely, and Anders did as he was told. “Nnnghh... oh, that’s good. Yeah.”

His excitement incensed Anders in turn, and he raised his head to get at Hawke’s mouth again. Hawke growled against him and pushed him back down against the Deep Road. His hand splayed on the stone next to Anders’s head as their mouths locked together furiously. Hawke’s body moved in a rolling wave above him, fucking his fist with increasing speed and ragged pants of pleasure.

Beneath him, Anders was panting with his own excitement. He couldn’t reach himself as he so desperately wanted to, but watching Hawke’s expression above him, feeling his hot breath on his face, his stiff length pumping so eagerly in and out of his clenched fist – there was a certain feverish pleasure in all these things. His heart was racing, not with anxiety, but with lust.

Hawke groaned loudly and trailed kisses across Anders’s face. “Oh, Maker, yes...” he mumbled. “Tighter... squeeze it tighter, Anders... _unnnngghh_....”

His thrusting rhythm became almost frantic against Anders’s fist, clearly close to orgasm. His eyes were half-closed, his lips parted, his forehead slick with sweat. His leaned down once again to suck eagerly on Anders’s neck, his jaw, his earlobe, anywhere he could.

“I’m going to come,” he breathed in Anders’s ear, and that was all the warning he could manage.

A split second later Anders felt the warrior’s cock pulsing in his hand and hot semen spilling from it in robust jets, again and again. Hawke grunted like an animal into the hollow of Anders’s shoulder, grazing his collarbone with his teeth almost hard enough to break the skin.

Anders didn’t care. Hawke was pliant in his hand, writhing and shuddering and groaning and ecstatic, and for that moment, Anders was the one in control. All of Hawke’s power radiated from the spasms of pleasure in his cock, and Anders had his hand wrapped around it.

Eventually the storm of Hawke’s orgasm passed, and he collapsed with a deep, satisfied rumble onto Anders’s chest, knocking the wind out of him. Anders had to struggle to get his semen-slick hand out from between their bodies. Hawke’s head was bent over Anders’s right shoulder, and he was silent except for the panting breath that made his back heave, up and down.

Anders wriggled a bit until he found a position that enabled him to breathe, and he watched Hawke bask in the afterglow of his release with a certain hazy satisfaction. He felt like he had tamed a savage beast. He was still somewhat afraid of him; Hawke was a vicious bastard, clearly crazy, excited by violence and brutality and bloodshed – and he could be really mean, too.

Even so, having felt the intoxicating power of being the one to have brought this elemental force of a man to an equally tempestuous climax, Anders thought he would at last be able to get past his fear and risk trying to get closer to him.

Eventually Hawke recovered himself enough to lift his head and smile down at him. Anders felt a thrill of delight seeing the expression.

“You should do that more,” he said to Hawke. “Practically every time I look at you, you’re scowling like you hate the whole world.”

Hawke’s face darkened.

Anders nodded. “Like that.”

“Hatred keeps me alive, Anders,” Hawke said with noticeable irritation in his voice. “Are you any different?”

That was a complicated question that he would have to think about to answer. Fortunately, Hawke diverted the thought with a sudden easy smirk that made Anders’s heart skip a beat.

“But for you,” he said softly, “I’ll try to do it more often.”

He leaned down to kiss him, and this time his lips were gentle, his tongue in Anders’s mouth affectionate rather than domineering.

Anders felt a spark within him, a warm glow of potential in a place he’d long thought had grown cold and dark. He didn’t dare hope for anything just yet; it would be too painful if nothing came of it and the spark died. So he let it be and simply lived in the moment, reveling in Hawke’s kiss.

When they broke apart, Hawke rolled off of him with a grunt. His shorts were still hooked under his balls, and he gave his semi-hard cock a few satisfied strokes. Then he glanced at Anders and immediately started laughing at the sticky mess he’d left all over the mage’s robe.

Anders looked down and grimaced, half in amusement and half in exasperation. He examined the copious ejaculation that was stuck all up the front of his robe, trying to think of a spell that would work to get it out. He wondered if there was even a remote chance he could get rid of it before Varric and Bethany saw it.

“I’m sorry,” Hawke said through his chuckles. “That was absolutely my fault. It’s hard to think clearly when you’re getting an expert hand job.”

“‘Expert,’ huh?” Anders said wryly. “I’m so pleased you think so.”

Hawke caught his chin in his hand and gave him another brief, fiery kiss. “I can’t wait to see how good you are with your tongue,” he said huskily, and Anders felt yet another spike of lust stir his loins.

“It’s all over you too,” he pointed out, gesturing towards the wet stain and gobs of rapidly congealing spunk that clung to Hawke’s undershirt.

“So it is,” Hawke said. “And... of course.”

He lifted his shirt to reveal still more of his own semen matted in the dense hair that covered his abdomen. Anders stared, itching to reach over and stroke his fingers along those gorgeous ripples of muscle. He would have gladly licked it all up just to get his face that close to Hawke’s body.

“It’s been a little while,” Hawke said by way of explanation, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “Not much opportunity to wank in the Deep Roads.”

Anders rolled his eyes. “Right. I’m sure the darkspawn would be just _appalled_.”

Hawke snorted. “It’s not the darkspawn I’m worried about appalling. It’s Bethany.”

He glanced down at his semen-splattered stomach. “Are you going to clean this up, or not?” he asked.

Anders blinked.

“What?” Hawke said with a lewd smirk. “You think I didn’t see you just now, staring at my belly? You know you want to.”

There was no point arguing with that logic. Anders leaned down eagerly and ran his tongue slowly over the ridges of flesh and the light, soft hair that covered them. Hawke’s skin tasted like he smelled – like blood and sweat, but mixed with the vaguely salty, slippery taste of semen. The erotic closeness of the act made him feel drunk. Hawke in general made him feel that way.

After he’d cleaned up Hawke’s stomach as best he could, Anders moved down to lick up the shaft of his cock, cleaning it as well. Hawke made an appreciative noise and stroked Anders’s hair, leaning back on one arm to support himself. When Anders finally, reluctantly drew away, Hawke pulled him over to kiss him and taste himself on Anders’s lips and tongue.

“You have a spell or something you can do for that?” Hawke asked, nodding towards the mess on Anders’s robe.

“I hope so,” Anders muttered. He’d thought of one that was ostensibly useful for removing stains of bodily fluids from clothing, but spells described in that way usually meant blood and other malodorous substances, not semen. Still, he would rather give it a try than walk out of the cave-in with the evidence of Hawke’s orgasm all over him. He could just imagine Varric’s smirk, Bethany’s awkward giggles and especially Fenris’s disdainful sneer. Not to mention the reactions of Bartrand and his hirelings.

Anders murmured the words to the spell and gestured with his free hand to direct the flows of magic as necessary. To his relief, the shuddering waves of light that washed over him left behind no trace of their tryst.

“Good,” Hawke whispered to him. “Now it’s your turn.”

His hand slipped into Anders’s robe, and the mage felt a delightful tingle as warm fingertips touched the skin of his chest. A thrill of anticipation fluttered through him. He had been wondering if Hawke would be interested in reciprocating his attentions after reaching his own orgasm.

Right on cue, the call of a frantic, muffled voice reached them through the mounds of rock all around.

Hawke proceeded to curse his way through an astonishingly fluent litany of blasphemous invective. Anders was better-versed than most in taking the Maker’s name in vain, but even he was astonished at some of the phrases that came out of Hawke’s mouth.

“That was... remarkable,” he commented when Hawke had finished. “And even a little arousing.”

Hawke grinned and winked at him, the expression making the warm glow in Anders’s stomach twist around in glee. They both turned their heads to listen as the voice came again.

“Michael!” It was unmistakably Bethany. “Anders! Can you hear me?”

“Cover your ears,” Hawke said, and Anders did so.

“Bethany!” Hawke bellowed. “We’re here! We’re alive, but it’s getting a bit stuffy under here! If you feel moved to get some of this blighted rock off our heads, I’m sure Anders would appreciate it, so please feel free!”

Anders marveled at the sudden strange good humour that had come over Hawke with the release of his (apparently) pent-up orgasm.

“Save your air, you idiot!” Bethany’s voice returned to them, and Hawke chuckled. “Just hang on for a few more minutes and I’ll get you out of there!”

Hawke started to put his armour on as the solid darkness around them shuddered. The noise and vibrations rippling against his barrier made Anders uncomfortably aware of the weight of the rock that buried them, but he at least had the distraction of watching Hawke get “dressed.”

“You think you can get it all on before she clears us off?” Anders asked.

Hawke smirked. “Watch me.”

Anders did so, gladly.

As intense as his relief at being rescued was, he couldn’t help a curious, quiet regret that his time alone with Michael Hawke was coming to an end. Their first intimate encounter, hopefully far from the last, and in the blighted Deep Roads under a cave-in of all places. It would be a while before they’d have the opportunity to be alone again, but Anders could be patient. He hoped.

Bethany blasted the last of the debris off their heads just as the air within their tiny bubble of safety was becoming dangerously stale. Hawke snapped his last buckle into place, completing his armour but for the helmet he’d left behind at the caravan, just in time. Apart from the reek of sex that was released when Anders let the barrier fall at last and the smug grin that Hawke couldn’t seem to wipe off his face, there was no sign whatsoever of what had occurred between them.

Bethany rushed over to them and hugged Hawke tightly, her father’s staff with its beautiful crimson sphere atop it dangling from one hand. “I was worried,” she whispered, and Hawke patted her back and stroked her hair in a rare display of softness.

Anders was staring in amazement at the cave-in – it had completely blocked the Road that branched off from the one they had been following. There was nothing visible except a wall of rubble, with a dent in it where Bethany had magically removed the boulders and gravel to get at where Anders and Hawke had been buried.

To his surprise, Bethany came to him and hugged him as well.

“Anders,” she said, and he was startle to hear a tremor in her voice. “I’m glad you’re safe. Very glad.”

Hawke was talking to Varric, but his eyes were on the two mages. Anders returned Bethany’s embrace warmly, feeling a rush of affection for the more kind-hearted Hawke sibling. “We’re fine, Bethany.”

“Thank you so much for keeping my brother safe,” Bethany whispered. “You kept up a barrier against the weight of all that rock for nearly three-quarters of an hour. That’s _amazing_. I don’t know if I could have done it.”

“I was motivated,” Anders said, and Hawke’s smile took on a sly quality.

Bethany gave him a final squeeze and turned around, leading him towards Hawke and Varric. They set off down the Road to meet the caravan, trundling onwards once again.

She spoke about battling shrieks with Fenris and the hirelings – no one had been killed, though several were injured – but Anders barely listened. His attention was mostly on Hawke, and Hawke’s (he could see) was mostly on him.

Presently they reunited with the caravan. Bartrand asked them briefly if they were “crippled” and, upon receiving assurance that they were not, moved on without another word.

Fenris made an appearance to express his gladness, in his usual laconic fashion, that Hawke was alive. To Anders’s surprise, the elf also thanked _him_ for his warnings about the shrieks. Anders nodded in response, not entirely trusting this uncharacteristic display of manners, but Fenris seemed to be as honest as he’d ever been.

Grudgingly, Bartrand allowed Anders to sit on one of the wagons for a time to recover the strength he’d expended keeping himself and Hawke alive. Their journey continued.

Hawke walked beside the wagon. Amidst the noise of the snorting brontos and the hirelings earnestly discussing the battle and mocking one another for their injuries, the two of them once more had a moment of almost-privacy.

“So. Have you noticed yet that you _didn’t_ give in to panic and get us both crushed to death?” Hawke commented.

“Are you that sure I didn’t?” Anders shot back. “Maybe I lost it completely and let the barrier fall, and we’re dead and with the Maker. Does this not look like the Golden City to you?”

Hawke scowled at him. “Shut up, idiot.”

Anders laughed.


End file.
